Nimko Ali: ‘Orgasms and sexual pleasure are a human right. I guard these things with my life’
For her first book, the anti-FGM campaigner spoke to 150 women around the world about sex, periods and more. She shares what she learned, and why she supports Boris Johnson
There is a Somali phrase, says Nimko Ali, that sums up the paradox of her status both as a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM) and an activist seeking to eradicate it. “‘Bilaa xishood’. It means ‘Do you have no shame?’ Since the age of seven, when I started talking about my vagina after FGM, I was told that I should be ashamed. But I wouldn’t have been talking about these things if FGM hadn’t happened to me. FGM was the patriarchy’s way of trying to break me and keep me silent, but it made me the loudest person in the room.”
As the co-founder of the charity Daughters of Eve, 36-year-old Ali has devoted herself to campaigning against FGM and gender inequality for nearly 10 years. Her aim is to end FGM by 2030. It is a practice that, according to the World Health Organisation, has affected 200 million women and girls alive today. This goal is ambitious, she says, but achievable. When we meet over coffee in Soho, central London, she has just come from a photo call at Lancaster House for the recipients of the Queen’s birthday honours, in which she has been awarded an OBE. As Ali told the gathered press, her mother would be “both proud and embarrassed … The idea that I got my award for talking about my vagina is not something that is celebrated in my community.”